Pistons/Sixers 1st Round Game 3, Fri April 25th 7:00 PM

If Larry could get over his prima donna'ish and stayed in Detroit, no way JMax would not be starting, no way Hayes would be on the roster with his lack of D, and no way Hermann would not have earned some pt.

Stuckey would probably be a perennial DNP, but Aflalo would get some burn, AND the starters would be playing consistent hard nosed hoops.

If Larry could get over his prima donna'ish and stayed in Detroit, no way JMax would not be starting, no way Hayes would be on the roster with his lack of D, and no way Hermann would not have earned some pt.

Stuckey would probably be a perennial DNP, but Aflalo would get some burn, AND the starters would be playing consistent hard nosed hoops.

I really don't understand this logic at all. AA and AJ are rookies so we shouldn't play them? We should just do nothing, or the same thing that causes us to lose?

You don't know if they won't make an impact, just like i don't know if they will. That's the point of playing players. And signs would point to them being productive if you just watched the season.

Thaddeus Young, and Lou Williams are rookies too. They seem to be doing fine.

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Problem is you just cant throw players on the court for just "try if it works". Heck,in such cases players have no idea what they are doing, because of they are...just trying what they can do. In most cases such things wont work.And how AA or AJ play, well, they have nothing to do with how Young or somebody else plays.

Im my opinion this bench is not capable for POs leave or take it. As long as Davidson refuses to pay lux tax. Our staring 5 eats 80-85% of salary cap and under such conditions dumars cant hire impact players. All what dumars has are rookie contracts and vet minimums.

Ratliff acquisition.
Experience? Screw experience. For chrissake, Flip, your team's getting beat up by a team that is mostly made up of playoff virgins! (sorry, just had to get that in)

Side note: Max is good, but games like these are why I don't see him being a legit starter in this league. He's so up and down, and he needs to expend so much energy trying to make up for his lack of height that he can't produce as much when he plays more than 20 odd minutes.

Flip's a moron, but LB's no saint. The play he drew up for Rip Hamilton in Game 5 of the '05 Finals, and his decision to play smallball during Game 7, had as much to do with the Pistons losing that championship as anything else.

Problem is you just cant throw players on the court for just "try if it works". Heck,in such cases players have no idea what they are doing, because of they are...just trying what they can do. In most cases such things wont work.And how AA or AJ play, well, they have nothing to do with how Young or somebody else plays.

Im my opinion this bench is not capable for POs leave or take it. As long as Davidson refuses to pay lux tax. Our staring 5 eats 80-85% of salary cap and under such conditions dumars cant hire impact players. All what dumars has are rookie contracts and vet minimums.

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That's what a majority of coaches do. In fact the two greatest Pop, and Jackson continually do this. If you have a system and the players understand the system, then it shouldn't be a problem.

It's how you find a spark.

Carney played well last game, and guess who gets min this game, even though he played in the last few min of a blowout.

As for nothing to do with Young, your whole argument was based on them being "rookies". Young is too. Seems relevant.

These are guys from their summer league team. And you contend that Afflalo and Amir can't get inserted into the game when these guys are on the floor?

I'll agree with you on a lot of points but not this one. Not for one second.

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To add a little matchup history to that..Afflalo has locked up Rodney Carney before, iirc, in the NCAA Elite Eight/Sweet Sixteen a few years back, the year Carney left for the draft. He was also effective in guarding Lou Williams, both in the summer league and the regular season. Just sayin'.

It may have been better just to forfeit ths game then go out there and throw up an effort like they did tonight...The Pistons were anemic 27-66 shooting and Rip and Tay made 17 of those 27 shots. Sheed, Billups, Stuckey and Hayes were a combined 5/31 shooting. Add in the 23 turnovers it was not a Pistons game you want to look at to re-analyze.. I stopped my DVR midway thru the 3rd qtr...

No Joe sightings tonight. Hopefully he was in a private suite trying to convince LB to comeback. We should have known this was going to be a loss with David Stern in the stands throwing out a hex/spell on the Pistons and ....cheering. Although he doesn't mind a Piston-Celtic ECF, the C's have to be the winner in order to asure that they are in the finals vs lakers or Spurs.

We may never put another Flip face up there on that counter and the good thing would be that Flip is gone for good!!! In fact I would fire him now and hand the coaching rains over to Curry or Porter. Maybe that will shake this team into playing some inspired basketball seeing that Joe means business!!

That's what a majority of coaches do. In fact the two greatest Pop, and Jackson continually do this. If you have a system and the players understand the system, then it shouldn't be a problem.

It's how you find a spark.

Carney played well last game, and guess who gets min this game, even though he played in the last few min of a blowout.

As for nothing to do with Young, your whole argument was based on them being "rookies". Young is too. Seems relevant.

Mo Cheeks is coaching circles around Flip.

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um.. are they doing it during POs...amidst of total mess?

Young is Young. Amir is Amir. When young plays well it doesn't mean that amir under similar conditions does it too.

I agree, coaches try players, BUT NOT DURING PO-s!!!!!!

If you think that our one dimensional bench( AJ can jump but is foul prone, AA can defend but cant score) can be savior during POs, then you hopes are too high. Stuckey was 1-7, maxiell didnt make a shot and was 2-6 from charity line. Hayes was 1-7. What do you hope from such boys? They just do not have enough skill yet to make bad things better.

I went out to get some Mongolian BBQ. Pistons game was on the screen. I glanced up...no surprise, really.

Guys, this is a blessing in disguise. They weren't going far anyhow. Better they should lose now and that way Flip is gone for sure. Plus maybe a little shake up of vets.

Really, I'm sorry for you guys who care so much more than I do about this team. You all deserve better my friends. But I think it's best to go out in the first round than to wait for a Cleveland or Miami (inferior talents) to knock us out. I'm not exactly going to root against Detroit, but I really think it's best to go out in round one if we can't seriously compete in the later rounds.

Flip sucks and the team needs a true player/leader too. Not a hot head like Sheed or an arrogant jackass like CB.

Sorry. Time for some changes. This team has become everything the 2004 team despised and destroyed on their way to the top.

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I agree with you. I've become more and more apathetic to this team over the past few years. I barely even watch the games anymore because I know that they're meaningless. The results may change, but the mentality has stayed the same for far too long. I was neither shocked or upset by this loss.

I watched maybe 5 minutes total of this game, flicking back and forth between other stuff that was on. I just have no desire to watch this team collapse under their own arrogance and their coaches stupidity.

1) We may be just old. I thought the first game we weren't game sharp but this loss looks like age (obviiously way more of a concern). Who played well? Our two younger starters: Rip and Tay. Coincidence? It appears that Sheed cannot bring it every night.

1A) We just don't seem to have another gear (again the sign of age) as this happened last year.

2) Billips

3) Billips: He is being totally beated by a near journeyman in Miller. Billips simply hurts us every time he drives. His drives killed us and then he lost confidence in his jumper.

4) We have had a suspect offense for a few years now, age or no age (here I will blame the coach).

How do we get by Philly? Believe it or not, we need to start getting our jumper game going. They are waiting back for us and Billips is falling into the trap. Rip too. Only Tay seems to be able to finish. They jammed Sheed as well.

On defense, we may have to bring Afflalo in early and take Miller out of the game. The only way to win is bog Miller down as we have bogged down Andre. Then unleash the jumpers as they are giving them to us.

The trouble with our youth is that they are not accomplished scorers. So we have to use them with the starters. The coach is in a tough spot whether you like him or not.

Young is Young. Amir is Amir. When young plays well it doesn't mean that amir under similar conditions does it too.

I agree, coaches try players, BUT NOT DURING PO-s!!!!!!

If you think that our one dimensional bench( AJ can jump but is foul prone, AA can defend but cant score) can be savior during POs, then you hopes are too high. Stuckey was 1-7, maxiell didnt make a shot and was 2-6 from charity line. Hayes was 1-7. What do you hope from such boys? They just do not have enough skill yet to make bad things better.

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We were getting blown out, and yes coaches do it during the PO's.

It also doesn't mean that Amir will not play well under similar circumstances.

We don't need a savior, we just need help. I don't see how AA having the ability to lock down someone and as alexa pointed out, 2 players that are ACTUALLY in this series isn't a skill we could desperately use. AA also makes our whole defense better, and seems to energize Sheed as does Amir with his quickness/energy/rebounding.

The exact things that we are lacking in this series that we need to counter Philly with are sitting on the bench.

We are getting beat down the floor.

We are getting outrebounded.

We can't stop their guards.

Flip let this game get out of hand by leaving the starters in.

The Pho game is a perfect example of how we countered a running team with speed of our own.

Improving our defense is critical, and strangely on offense we tend to do better when we have one or two non scoring guys in the line-up.

The way the starters were playing you have to at least try the rookies. I mean we ballyhood the Zoo crew for the last two months and now in the PO's they will become the zero crew. If Cheeks can play his rookies and second year men, our coach has to believe that his are as good as theirs.

If he is affraid to play AA, then just dress Dixon and leave Hunter in a leisure suit. He has not done anything yet. The game was 20-20 at the end of one. As soon as Theo came in, the offense went out of sync because somebody put the ball in his hands. AJ would have been just in there to get boards and blocks and garbage ...like Ben did... We are playing old 34+ year old vets in Theo and Hunter vs a team that has no know over 30 playing.

Our vets shoot jumpers, their youth go to the hoop. We have to try our youth now when the vets flame out other wise they will be watching the sixers on TV in the next round with us.

since 2005, the starters being 'worn out' has been a common excuse every year. this year, that should not be the case. but the problem is, flip never orchestrated the team to peak going into the playoffs. he basically gave this team a layoff for the last 40 games of the year, with tons of rest for the last 15 games or so. the problem is, the pistons look like they havent played competetive bball in a while, which is somewhat true. its a double edged sword, and flip did not do a good job juggling it.

my compaint on this team was that you cant be back the same team every year, thats where complacency takes place. joe actually did a nice job of rebuilding a nice, young bench lately, but its clear that flip runs streight to the starters whenever the going gets tough.

Scary thing about this game, Philly won with D. Detroit shot well the first half and was still down.

Why? Because Philly was playing much more aggressive-gambling D, the result: Philly got more turnovers, but Detroit got easier shots when they beat the D. But once Philly got the lead, we stopped playing our normal O, and the easy shots stopped coming, but the turnovers continued.

It also doesn't mean that Amir will not play well under similar circumstances.

We don't need a savior, we just need help. I don't see how AA having the ability to lock down someone and as alexa pointed out, 2 players that are ACTUALLY in this series isn't a skill we could desperately use. AA also makes our whole defense better, and seems to energize Sheed as does Amir with his quickness/energy/rebounding.

The exact things that we are lacking in this series that we need to counter Philly with are sitting on the bench.

We are getting beat down the floor.

We are getting outrebounded.

We can't stop their guards.

Flip let this game get out of hand by leaving the starters in.

The Pho game is a perfect example of how we countered a running team with speed of our own.

Improving our defense is critical, and strangely on offense we tend to do better when we have one or two non scoring guys in the line-up.

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One dimensional players cannot at the same time masterfully defend, outrebound, penetrate, etc. There were way too many holes; one or two players from bench are not capable of covering them. I'm still sticking with that: with bench on the floor sixers could have extend their lead. Do not treat bench like whatever situation it is, answer is there.If they are so good players why are they sitting on the bench? Thats it. Want better bench? Then davidson has to pay lux tax.

I thought that not having the starters game ready was why we lost game one. But it is harder to say that in game three. We are aging at key spots (guard and power forward and center) and I hope I am wrong. We just don't seem to have a playoff other gear.

Sheed is still dominant but couldn't muster up much tonight. Billips is being beated by a second tier guard. Our younger starters Tay and Rip were very good.

The Spurs are not as old as we are really. Parker runs the show at 25. Ginobli is on the cusp at 30. Duncan is 31 I believe. Sheed is now 33. Those couple of years are a lot in the NBA.

To others, our youth have not shown they can score consistently. The coach ( and I have never been a Flip fan) is really in a bind. I think he has to roll the dice and play for defense early (Afflalo on Miller). But this must be combined with opening up our offense. The drives are killing us with Billips leading the way. A coach sizes up what the opponent is doing and counters. They are waiting for us and we are obliging with Billips leading us all the way to the hoop and a block, wild toss or turnover. We need to adjust.